Fifteen minutes later, I was heading out the back door to the garden when a soft woof met my ears. I blinked, stared, and couldn’t believe what I saw. Sitting next to the freshly dug earth, with a giant red ribbon tied around its neck, was a tiny yellow Labrador Retriever.
I clapped my hands over my mouth and the puppy woofed at me and started to wiggle, his entire body wagging as if his tail alone wasn’t enough. I ran and fell to my knees in front of the little guy, scooping him up and holding him close as he licked my face, his still-sweet puppy breath tickling me.
“Oh, you devil of a man,” I said as I cuddled the bundle of fur. “What are we going to call you, hmm?” I rubbed his velvety soft ears and he settled down, resting his nose on the crook of my neck. I pressed my cheek against him. “How about Nero?” I’d grown up with a big yellow Lab that my grandparents had rescued and he’d been my companion and best friend for years.
A voice called from the front of the house, “Hello? Mrs. Wilson?”
Standing up, Nero in my arms, I walked around the house to see Jessica carrying a basket filled to the brim. She smiled at me over the basket, her eyes lighting on Nero.
“You’ve got a puppy? Oh, he’s so cute. Can I hold him?” I handed him to her as she handed me the basket of goodies.
“It’s a belated welcome-to-our-neighbourhood gift,” Jessica said as she snuggled with the wriggling puppy.
“Thank you, that’s really sweet.” I placed the basket on the porch railing. “Do you want to go for a walk with me and Nero?”
Jessica nodded and put him down. We headed out the front drive, past the heavy iron gates that had hung for as long as the property had existed. They were heavy and sturdily built when the farm first was started. Each panel was taller than me, and easily weighed a hundred pounds. The supports were cemented into the ground on either side, and there was a huge rusting metal bar that slipped into place to lock it. Scrolling leaves and grape clusters were welded on in an attempt to soften the hard steel lines, to make it look more artistic than utilitarian. It didn’t work that well. At the best of times, it was a major effort to close the thing, which is why we left it open, and why the bar was nearly covered in vegetation.
Jessica chatted at me the entire time, her bubbly personality yet another stamp of her mothers. I didn’t mind; she was a sweet girl. I wondered several times why she’d taken the Nevermore shot; she didn’t seem to need to lose weight, but I didn’t think it was a question I could ask her. Maybe when her mother came over for coffee I would broach the subject.
Jessica pointed out the neighbours who were nice, weird, and neutral quite effectively. As we passed one house we could hear shouting from inside, then a crash of something heavy. I glanced at Jessica, and she shrugged.
“They’re always fighting. We all just ignore it.”
I couldn’t help but stare backwards as we kept moving past the house. The shrieks rose to a crescendo, and then stopped suddenly. I shivered, a feeling of dread creeping along my skin. Once we were fully past that home, Jessica continued her tour of the area.
Though the properties around here ranged in size, they averaged at five acres a piece with a few undeveloped properties scattered around. On our road alone there were only four homes; the roads on either side of us boasted two and three, respectively. With being this rural, it was almost like being in our own little world. If not for T.V and internet, the world could end and we probably wouldn’t even know it.
Which was just fine by me, I like the quiet.
The walk took us about an hour, and by the end of it, I was packing Nero. I didn’t mind; he was tiny, and the walk and visit left me feeling invigorated and more alive than I’d felt in weeks.
“Hey, that was fun. Would it be okay if I came and walked with you and Nero again?” Jessica asked as we stood in front of my place.
“Of course, anytime, you don’t need to call. I’m not going back to work for a while yet so just pop in.”
Jessica waved and jogged off toward home.
The car was back which meant that Sebastian was home. I smiled and headed toward the house. I didn’t care how grateful I sounded or how he might try to blackmail me with it later, he was a good man and I was lucky to have him.
“Sebastian?” I called out, Nero sound asleep in my arms. I wanted to apologize for being a jerk.
“Here.”
I clutched Nero close and kissed the top of his down-soft head, and made my way to the living room where Sebastian sat glued to the TV.
“Really? After the talk you just gave me about not wallowing and being out in the sunshine?” I said, tapping him on the shoulder. “I can’t believe you bought me a—”
“Shhh,” he cut me off and pointed to the TV.
On the screen was a reporter standing in front of VGH, Vancouver General Hospital. “It appears that the miracle drug, Nevermore, wasn’t such a miracle after all. Early reports are that the toxins thought to be strained out of the main component of the drug—cystius scoparius, better known as scotch broom—were not eliminated.” The reporter choked up, her eyes misting over, and I wondered if she had taken the drug or knew someone close to her who had. “The toxins attack the part of the brain that makes us human, whole sections of the cerebral cortex are eaten away until there is nothing left but a base animal instinct.” Someone stumbled out of the hospital and the reporter turned and ran toward the man who clutched at his stomach. “Sir, can you tell us why you’re here today?”
“I’m so hungry, I can’t stop eating. Nothing fills me up.” His eyes were glazed and his skin had a strong golden yellow hue to it, as if he were jaundiced.
“Sir, did you take the drug Nevermore?” she asked, sticking the microphone close to the man.
He stared at the microphone for a moment, opened his mouth to answer, and chomped his teeth around the fuzzy piece, growling and snarling. The sounds sent chills all over my body. The reporter backed away, the cameraman keeping tabs on the man attempting to devour the microphone. Then he looked up, right into the camera. His pupils twitched as the camera focused in on them, sliding from a perfect, human round, to a horizontal rectangle, reminiscent of a goat’s eye.
I gasped and grabbed for Sebastian’s hand. He gave it to me and I clung to him. That could have been me if I’d taken the shot—would have been me if not for the main ingredient. I pressed my nose into Nero’s fur and breathed in his scent as Sebastian’s hand went clammy in mine.
The man stood and opened his mouth. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to speak or if he was roaring at the camera. By the cameraman’s reaction, he was roaring. The scene jigged and jogged as the cameraman and the reporter fled, but in her heels and tight business skirt, the reporter wasn’t fast enough. The camera turned in time to see her get tackled from behind, her body slamming into the ground under the weight of the Nevermore man.
He reared up and slammed his mouth into her back, ripping a chunk of flesh as if she were a loaf of bread. Her screams were audible from whatever mic was left on the camera, then the camera was dropped and the screen scrambled, and then went black.
“That wasn’t for real,” I said, though I knew already in my gut that it was. It was like watching a hurricane rip apart a house. You didn’t think it was possible, didn’t think they would air it, but in your heart you knew it wasn’t staged.
Sebastian didn’t say anything, he just flipped the channel. They were all breaking news and bulletins. The Nevermore drug had been taken by what officials were estimating was close to ninety percent of the North American population over the last two months—street versions and FDA approved versions—both of which were having the same effect.
We watched in stunned silence for over an hour, the reports coming hard and fast at first, but then slowing as people were cautioned to stay within their homes and avoid all contact with the outside world while the outbreak was taken care of.
“I never thought I’d see the day a zombie apocalypse would happen,” I said as Sebasti
an turned the TV off.
“They aren’t zombies,” he snapped at me as he rubbed his left arm. “They can’t bite you and turn you into one of them. The doctors on TV said that already.”
“I didn’t say that they could bite you, I just said that they were zombies,” I said, confused by his sudden turn of mood.
“No, you didn’t. I’m sorry; this has just really freaked me out,” he said and pulled me into his arms, Nero squirming in between us.
“It’ll be okay,” I said, “We’ve got each other and the farm. We should be good for a while, right? It won’t take long. Someone will have this straightened out in no time.”
Sebastian untangled himself from me and strode to the kitchen. “We have to be ready.”
I followed him. “For what?”
“I think we’re going to be on our own for a while,” he said as a loud thumping footstep echoed through our little house.
My adrenaline soared as I thought about the scene on the TV. The reporter hadn’t had a chance. I could still hear her screams and the peeling of her flesh from his bite . . .I swallowed hard and put Nero in the bathroom on a makeshift towel-bed, shut the door, and headed back into the kitchen. I didn’t want to believe that we were already going to face down one of the Nevermores, but it was all too likely. I stepped to my knife drawer, pulled out the biggest blade I had, and gripped it tight. Sebastian nodded and pulled out a knife of his own. Together we crept through the house to the front door, reaching it as another thump rumbled through the floorboards. What the hell was out there? I didn’t want to know, really I didn’t.
Sebastian held up his hand and with his fingers counted to three. I nodded, and he held up one finger, two, and as he held up the third, he gripped the doorknob and snapped the door open.
5
We both stumbled back in relief, Dan staring at us with bushy grey eyebrows lifted high. He had his gun slung over his shoulder and a strap across his chest that was full of ammunition, long gold and silver cartridges. They looked big enough to drop an elephant.
“You two need some lessons in surviving. First off, don’t go investigating a strange noise without some serious firepower. This is not a horror movie, there’s no hero going to come rescue you. You want to survive this outbreak of idiots who took some new drug and turned into animals, you’re gonna have to do it on your own.”
He stepped across the threshold and sauntered into our house, casual like, as if he belonged here. I lifted an eyebrow at Sebastian who shrugged and said, “Dan, what’re you doing here?”
“Don’t you listen, boy? You need a lesson or two before I go and lock myself in the bunker.” He paced around the living room, peering out the curtains of the bay window.
“Dan, they’ll have an antidote in no time and this will go down as one of the greatest blunders in history and everything will go back to normal,” I said, desperately wanting to believe my own words.
“You really believe that, girl?” He turned his steely eyes on me.
I froze, my mouth dry as he made me face the reality with a single look. I shook my head ever so slowly.
He mimicked me. “Didn’t think so.” He flopped himself onto our couch. With a sharp motion of his hand, he beckoned us to come closer. Sebastian obeyed, but I stayed where I was, near to the open door.
“Second thing.” Dan leaned forward, elbows on his knees and lowered his voice. “Food and water. Next is weapons. Then you got to have a way to keep them out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, my fear making me surly. “There isn’t going to be any horde or pack or whatever you think there’s going to be.” A breeze blew in and I spun to close the door, gasping at the person standing on the edge of the doorstep. I vaguely recognized him as the portly clerk from Tom’s Grocery. But he was no longer chubby. He was lean, the excess flesh hanging off his arms and face, the skin a sickly yellow like the man on the TV. Worst was the way his pupils had become a horizontal slit that stole his humanity from him.
“Hungry,” was all he said as he launched himself at me. I stumbled backwards with a grunt, striking out with my knife and getting nothing but air. We hit the ground and I rolled, trying to remember my distant Judo lessons, failing miserably. The clerk ended up on top of me, but didn’t pin my knife hand; I suppose he was too focused on eating me. Before I knew what I was doing, I had my left hand wrapped around his throat, keeping his snapping teeth off me, and I slammed the knife upwards into his heart, blood spurting out around the blade and down the handle.
I blinked and his body was suddenly gone; yanked off me with a growl. Sebastian stared down at me with a look of horror across his face.
Dan stepped up next to him. “She’s got a good survival drive. That’ll serve you well. If she were a screamer, you’d be dead in no time.”
I lay on the floor staring up at them, my brain trying to process what just happened. I’d been attacked, and I’d killed a man. In a less time than it took to take a breath of air, my life had twisted itself inside out. My hands were slick with his blood, and as I stood, a wave of vertigo washed over me.
“She’s gonna puke.”
Hands were suddenly on me, guiding me outside where I did indeed puke, heaving till my stomach was empty and sweat beaded on my forehead. Dan turned the hose on and I washed my hands clean and sprayed the cool water over my face. I had killed a man. My stomach clenched again and I dry heaved.
“Oh shit,” Sebastian said, his voice off to my right, his hands tightening on my arms.
“I’ll be okay,” I said.
“Not you, babe.” He turned me to the front of our property and the open gate. “Them.”
Maybe it wasn’t a horde, but there was close to twenty people walking our way, the distinct yellow of their skin visible even from here.
Sebastian let me go and ran for the gate.
“Bastian, don’t!” As a unit, every single one of the Nevermore’s heads snapped up, their slitted eyes focusing on the source of the scream. Me.
“Damn it, girl, I told you no noise,” Dan growled as he walked past me, putting his gun to his shoulder and taking aim at the running horde, though he didn’t pull the trigger. Sebastian reached the gate the same time as the first of the Nevermores and he flung the heavy panels shut, slamming the lock into place as they hammered their bodies up against it, screaming and howling, their eyes wild and hands reaching for Sebastian.
I ran down the porch, jumped across the flowerbeds, and ran to where Sebastian stood panting, staring at the horde in front of us. “Why aren’t they trying to climb the gate?” I whispered.
Sebastian shook his head, breathing hard. That had been a quick sprint for a man of his size, faster than I’d seen him move in years.
Dan strolled up next to us, casually, like he was out for a Sunday visit, and except for the gun slung over his shoulder and the horde of Nevermores at our gate, he could have been.
“Interesting, that. They don’t seem to be able to figure it out. Like animals penned up.” But even as he spoke, one of the Nevermores pushed his way through to the front of the group and began to fiddle with the gate, his fingers clumsy and far from dexterous. He didn’t seem to be able to use the finer points of motor skills, which was better for us. All the same, he was still trying to open the gate.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Sebastian said, pulling me with him as he backed away from the gate.
I didn’t need a lot of encouragement. I was not interested in facing down that horde anytime soon. Thank God our place was fully fenced.
“We’re stuck here for a while, boy. Might as well get used to the idea, unless you’ve got a tank in that shed over there.” Dan pointed to the dilapidated chicken coop we’d partially knocked down in preparation for a garden.
“We don’t need a tank.” I surprised myself by speaking my thoughts out loud to a virtual stranger. “We’ll just take the car. They can’t stop us, and we’ll just run them over.”
I could barely beli
eve the words that came out of my mouth and apparently neither could Sebastian.
“You’re kidding me, right? Those things out there are people underneath it all, and you want to run them over?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, they want to EAT us, not play Parcheesi,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. A sharp rattle snapped all three of our heads toward the gate in unison. The horde was leaning into the steel gates, the hinges groaning. Every last one of them had their mouths open, teeth showing, saliva dripping and hanging from loose lips.
“We need to get out of sight,” Dan said, walking back to the house.
“We need to get out of here!” Hysteria bubbled up. I’d just killed a man and we had a horde of drug-induced zombies on our doorstep. I clapped my hands over my face and tried to block out the moment. The sights were gone, but the groan of the gates, the growling of the horde, still reached me, denying me my moment of escape.
A hand on my arm snapped my eyes open. Sebastian dragged me toward the house. “We’ll talk about what we’re going to do inside. The last thing we need is to go off half-cocked and get ourselves killed.”
I let him direct my body, but I couldn’t help but stare over my shoulder at the writhing mass of things that had until very recently been human. “This can’t be happening.”
A sharp shake brought my eyes up to Sebastian, fear and the denial of that fear making his eyes those of a person I barely recognized. “It is happening, Mara, and you need to get used to the idea,” he said, his mouth a thin hard line. I jerked my arm out of his hands.
“You’re an ass, you know that, don’t you?” I stomped toward the front door, slamming it behind me. All I wanted was a little comfort, a white lie or two to get me through the initial shock. After that, I could come to terms with what was going on.
The living room was dim, the flickering of the TV the only light, as the curtains and blinds were drawn down. Dan sat on the couch, his feet propped up on the hand-carved coffee table we’d bought for our first place.
Sundered: Book 1 (The Nevermore Trilogy) Page 3